OK, so this is the part where we finally get to the Wackers, who came over for dinner last night, and were guinea pigs on not one but 2 dishes: chicken with dumplings, and apple upside down cake.  Chicken with dumplings was fun - brown chicken, brown veggies, dump everything back into a big pot and boil for 45 minutes.  Take chicken out and pull all the meat off the bones.  Throw meat back in to boiling pot and then drop dumpling dough on top.  In all, it worked well because the Wacker kids and parents helped pull the chicken off the bones.  In the end, I thought the taste was pretty darn good - chicken bones and thigh meat tend to have that effect.  I liked the dumplings too - plenty of bready-goodness on the inside. 5 out of 5 salt cellars.  One thing we learned - it doesn't have to be done in a dutch oven.  We have a heavy steel pot, in which made another batch, and it also worked well. 

The last dish was apple upside-down cake.  The middle of the cake was a little under-done, so I'll probably cook it for 5 ot 10 minutes longer next time.  I'll call it 4 out of 5 salt cellars - pretty tasty, but not as good as Alton's super apple pie.  

 

I have been cooking a little bit recently, and wanted to blog a little on it.  It may or may not be interesting - you'll just have to avert your eyes if this sort of thing is boring.  I took some pictures a long time ago on the first thing I'll post on - pulled-pork sandwiches.  This is probably one of my favorite dishes of all time because I love pork and I love north carolina bbq sauce - I don't know why  took me so long to discover both of them.  One of my problems with regular pulled pork sandwiches, is that the regular bbq sauce overwhelms the flavor and texture of the pork, turning the sandwich into a mushy, sticky, sloppy joe kind of thing.  Not so in north carolina, which uses a cider vinegar-based sauce with spectacular results.  This recipe is pretty straight forward - smoke a pork shoulder roast, or boston butt (which Alton points out isn't a butt at all) for about 4 hours, keeping coals and smoke going strong.  Most of the meat is falling apart at that point, but even the leaner portions taste good.  The smoke penetrates about a quarter inch into the meat and it is amazing.  Although this isn't an alton recipe (it comes out of Steven Raichlen's "how to grill") I have to give it 5 salt cellars out of 5.  If I were to cook it again (which I have since then) I really wouldn't do anything differently.  Putting the carolina cole slaw on top was a bit strong at first, but now I really like it.

More recently, I have started to take a magazine called cook's illustrated (an offshoot of Amerca's Test Kitchen).  Having secured the first 2 issues, I have started through a number of recipes, and am duly impressed.  They take a lot of time to explain what is going on, and their recipes have all been spot on so far.  The first one I tried was grilled flank steak w/provolone and proscuitto.  It turned out to be a crowd pleaser and tasty at the same time.  It's not every day you see meat lollipops on the grill - the kids liked how it looked and tasted a lot.  The prep was easier than it might seem.  After butterflying the flank steak and pounding it, I put the provolone and proscuitto on the sheet and rolled it up.  After binding it with grill-proof rubber bands and poking

 skewers every inch, I sliced up into lollipops - voila!  Easy-peasy.  Grilling was also easy, although the skewers were incinerated.  Taste-wise, this dish scored very well.  Flank steak is flavorful but not too tough, and plays well with the cheese and pork tastes in the dish.  I would score it a 4 out of 5 salt cellars - the cheese makes things a little greasy for me, but overall, very good.  A couple of things I would do differently are: 1 - tenderize the meat with one of those retracting 80 blade meat tenderizers before pounding, and 2 - soak skewers for a couple of hours so they don't burn.  

Another recipe from the cooking mag was spanish tortillas.  Stu will be very happy to see this one since he has an aversion to anything that is assumed to be spanish that is actually from mexico.  Look, Stu, this one really is from spain.  It really just an omelet that is heavy on olive oil and potatoes.  It was very easy to make - just cook potatoes & onions in some olive oil until tender, then add eggs and other ingredients.  

Cook, flip and cook, and you're done.  The flip part didn't work so well for me, but we have solved that by getting a different pan.  Overall, this might work better as a breakfast, but I liked it for dinner too.  Marie made some garlic mayo to go on top, and the whole thing was delectable.  5 out of 5 salt cellars.  It is so straightforward that I wouldn't do anything different next time

.  

Ok - I admit this isn't as good as the Ohki reunion video from last year, but it's the best I can do on short notice. Watching this makes us pine for Hawaii, and remember how much fun it is to spend time with the Ohkis and Gma Ohki in the Aloha State.



I also realize this is my first blog post in 5 months. Needless to say, my idea of turning my blog into a cooking thingy has been unsuccessful. I still cook - I'm just not religious about getting the pics and story onto the blog. Maybe next week.